Captain's Best
by MysteryGal5
Summary: It all seemed too good to be true: his best friend and his best girl together on his best day. And then, it wasn't / Steve pays a visit to SHIELD's Wall of Valor where he sees the name of his best friend and best girl (AU / OS) (Steve x Peggy)


**So this idea was another one of my "ideas for who knows how long" but I've been recently creating little snippets for it. And then, ****_Avengers Endgame _****came out. I have not seen the movie but I got it spoiled for me literally at midnight the day it came out. This one-shot will not spoil it whatsoever, but for those of you who have already seen the movie, you'll see that it's a fitting idea (for the most part).**

**So, yeah, I wrote this the day it came out to get all my post-_Endgame_ spoilers emotions out.**

**These characters do not belong to me. I hope you enjoy :)**

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Captain's Best:

His heart races as he straightens his suit jacket. Steve stands up front before the crowd: the congregation made up of his closest and dearest friends. He sees The Howling Commandos all dressed up in their best suits, sitting with gleeful smiles on their faces. Even Colonel Chester Phillips is present, sitting at the end of the Commandos. Steve looks at him, wondering how long it will take for the stern man to break even the smallest tear or something as simple as a smile. Steve sees that as inevitable, which is why he isn't even considering the other possibility. Then, Steve notices that sitting beside the Colonel is Dr. Erskine, who spares him a slight head nod of respect and luck for this fine day.

This is Steve's day, after all, and one of the best days of his life.

"All rise for the bride," the officiant who stands behind Steve announces.

Slowly, the congregation rises and looks back. From the altar, Steve looks ahead and sees his beautiful bride, his best girl, his Peggy Carter. His brave, smart, determined, resourceful Agent Carter. She glows from where she stands, at the back of the church, and Steve has to pinch himself to see if this is actually real. A part of his still doesn't understand how a woman so beautiful could ever be associated with someone like him.

She's dressed in all white, hair pulled back, a small white hairpiece slightly covering her eyes and a bouquet of blue flowers in her hands. Lace tightly covers her entire body and Steve can follow the intricate patterns with his eyes. Eventually, his gaze makes his way up to her face where her simplistic expression of joy is all that he needs to confirm that this is the best day of his life.

Steve can't help but stare at her lovingly as the music starts and she begins walking closer to him at the altar. As tears brim in his eyes, a small nudge on his arm slightly distracts him from his bride. Steve slightly glances over and it's his best man, Bucky standing beside him with a proud look on his face.

"You lucked out, Steve," Bucky whispers to him, "you dreams really did come true."

Steve chuckles to himself as he turns back to watch Peggy finish her walk down the aisle. Eventually, she arrives and is standing parallel to him as the congregation sits down. Now, all eyes are on them. Or, as Steve would say, all eyes are on her. How could anyone look at him when someone as unbelievably beautiful as his bride stands there?

Peggy mouths something to him which he misses and she can tell based on the dazed look on his face.

"Are you ready?" Peggy repeats, this time faintly whispering the words. Her red lipstick almost hypnotizes him in a way that's beyond distraction.

Steve doesn't respond with words because he's absolutely speechless in her presence. Instead, he nods his head as he takes her hands into his own.

"Before we begin with this unity," the officiant announces to everyone, "is there anyone in this congregation who dares object to this unification."

Not even a second passes before someone rises from the midst of the congregation.

"I object!"

Some people gasp as everyone turns over to see who said that. Confused, Steve finds himself looking at Sam, dressed in his jogging sweatshirt and shorts. Steve doesn't understand why Sam would object to this wedding let alone show up wearing his exercise clothes. Sam shuffles through the row he was sitting in and is now standing in the aisle. All eyes are on him.

"This isn't real, Steve," Sam tells him.

Those words make Steve's heart stop. _No, that can't be right. It's perfect. It has to be real_. Steve shakes his head, looking away from Sam. He turns to the officiant and it's suddenly Director Fury in his black trench coat. _That's the part of this that isn't real and that's it. Everything else is certainly real._

"You've been asleep, Cap, for over seventy years…" Fury tells him.

_And there's the ice cold truth. _

_That's when reality starts seeping into his best day like an unwanted guest._

Chills are sent down Steve's spine and he suddenly feels as cold as he was when the plane was getting closer to crashing through the ice. Then, almost at once, everything around him starts to fade away in the mist caused by the incoming ice. Steve exhales in a panic, being able to see his own breath.

He sees the congregation and they all vanish. He turns around to Bucky and he falls back into a snowy abyss, reaching out for him. Steve tries to grab him but he's already gone. And when Steve turns to look at Peggy, her dress starts to blend into the ice around them. Her eyes have tears in them and the bouquet in her hands is now a radio communicator.

"Steve?" She questions. Her voice cracks like the radio static he heard moments before ice water suffocated him, freezing him.

And when she's gone, he's no longer at his wedding.

He's in the big bright city, surrounded by cars and towering buildings, looking right at Director Fury once again.

"You've been asleep, Cap, for over seventy years…" Fury repeats.

-o-

A single tear falls from Steve's eyes as he looks back up at SHIELD's Wall of Valour. He sees both Bucky and Peggy's name on plaques that are slightly bigger than the other ones that encircle them. Obviously. Steve isn't demeaning the other soldiers and agents who died in honour, but it's one of SHIELD's founder and someone she deemed as the first death of an agent (even if Bucky technically wasn't an agent at the time). Steve owes it to Peggy for making that request and having it executed. It's not like she would accept any different outcome.

He owes her a lot of things, actually.

He owes him a lot of this as well.

Without them, he wouldn't be where he is today.

Having a soulmate isn't always about love and it's possible to have more than one. It can be the best love and best friend at the same time.

Steve has those kinds of dreams often. The ones that seem too perfect and too fictional. They stem from his best memories he construed to give himself the ending he would've wanted if he didn't have to crash the plane to win the war. But he should have seen that coming because the cruellest thing about memories is that they seem pleasant when they appear the way they want to be remembered. But when it comes to the realization that they're _only_ memories, they emerge from the shadows and linger in your bones, making everything about you feel heavy.

That was the hardest part about waking up after all those years. It wasn't the shock from being in a different era, it was that the world seemed to move on and he was still back in the 40s. He was forced to at least _try_ to adapt and move on because there was no way to go back to the days he would have wanted for himself.

Pain can help some people move on, but not Steve. Losing people he loves who thought he died isn't easy to accept, but losing himself because they won't know he's alive is even worse.

One of the things he's grateful for is not looking like what he's been through.

A hand softly claps on his shoulder, shocking him a little from his thoughts. A part of him is grateful for being removed from them. Steve looks up from his hunched shoulders and sees Sam standing there with a compassionate look on his face. He can tell what Steve's been thinking of for the longest time.

"Ready when you are, Cap," Sam says.

Steve nods his head, looking back to those two names on the wall.

Nobody will protect him from his suffering. He can't cry or starve the grief away. It's just there and he'll have to endure it before it eats him whole. He'll have to live through it, respect it, and move on. He has to get better from it and run as far as he can in the direction of his best and happiest moments from this point forward.

Besides, he can always appreciate the dream before the bad happened. It was still one of his best days even if it wasn't real. The problem with happy endings is that they're either not really happy or not really endings. Happy endings are just sad stories you haven't finished yet.

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**I wrote this after reading the spoilers and I just needed to get those emotions out of my system before I implode. So, I hope you enjoyed this. Thanks to anyone who read this. Let me know what you thought and if you have any story ideas you want me to write, don't be scared to let me know.**

**~ MysteryGal5**


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